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How many Muslim Americans currently serve in U.S. federal and state government positions (2025)?
Executive summary
Available reporting and organizational lists show that as of 2025 there are a small but growing number of Muslim Americans in elected federal office—Wikipedia’s compiled list counts five Muslims elected to the U.S. Congress as of 2025 [1]—and advocacy groups reported historic gains in 2025 local and state contests, citing 42 Muslim Americans elected to public office across nine states [2]. Beyond those tallies, systematic, authoritative counts of all Muslim Americans holding federal and state offices (including appointed positions, judgeships, and local posts) are not fully represented in the available sources and therefore not exhaustively verifiable here [2] [1].
1. What the clear numbers say: Congress and headline tallies
The most concrete, widely cited figure in the available material is Wikipedia’s running list stating that “as of 2025, five Muslims have been elected to Congress” — a focused count that applies only to members of the U.S. House and Senate, not to state legislatures, judges, or local offices [1]. Separately, advocacy reporting attributes 42 Muslim Americans elected to public office in the 2025 election cycle across nine states, a figure that includes mayors, state legislators, judges, and local officials; that number comes from Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and CAIR Action as cited by Radiance News [2]. These two sources present different scopes: one is a historical Congressional list, the other a campaign-season tally of diverse offices [1] [2].
2. Why tallies differ: definitions, scope, and who’s counting
Differences in totals reflect definitional choices. A Congressional list counts only members of the U.S. House and Senate and is maintained as a discrete historical roster [1]. The 42-officials figure reported by CAIR/ Radiance News bundles multiple office types — mayors, state legislators, judges, and local school or city board members — and therefore will exceed a pure Congressional count [2]. Neither source in the provided set offers a comprehensive government-wide registry of “Muslim Americans in federal and state government positions” across all grades and appointments [1] [2].
3. What the sources do not provide: gaps and limits in public data
Available sources do not provide a centrally maintained, up-to-date inventory of all Muslim Americans serving across federal and state branches, including appointed federal officials, executive-branch appointees, career civil servants who identify as Muslim, or every state legislator and judge (not found in current reporting). MAPS (Muslim Americans in Public Service) documents Muslim presence in federal employment broadly but does not publish a single total count of elected or appointed officials across all levels in the materials shown [3]. Major polling and demographic reports cited here (Pew, ISPU) analyze attitudes and representation trends but do not replace a comprehensive roster of officeholders [4] [5].
4. Context: representation trends and civic mobilization
Advocates and community organizations frame the 2025 wins as historic and part of growing civic participation; Radiance News relays CAIR’s statement that 42 Muslim Americans were elected across nine states, including five mayors and four state legislators, signaling increased local and state-level representation [2]. Pew Research and ISPU material in this collection emphasize political engagement and demographic context for Muslim Americans—useful background for interpreting representation gains even though they do not enumerate officeholders [4] [5].
5. Competing views and potential agendas to note
Advocacy groups like CAIR naturally highlight gains and milestones; their counts may include a broad array of offices to demonstrate progress [2]. A neutral, compiled list like Wikipedia’s congressional roster is narrower and focused on federal legislative seats only [1]. Some opinion outlets in the search results present partisan or ideological narratives about Muslim population growth or political influence that are not corroborated by the empirical lists here; those should be read as commentary rather than authoritative counts [6].
6. How to get a more definitive, verifiable total
To produce a comprehensive 2025 total of Muslim Americans in federal and state government would require: (a) a clear definition (elected only? appointed and civil servants included? local offices counted?), (b) primary-source verification for each officeholder’s self-identification or reliable reporting, and (c) aggregation from state legislatures, judiciary rosters, federal appointment lists, and municipal records. The sources available here do not perform that full aggregation; they offer a confirmed Congressional figure (five) and an advocacy-reported multi-office tally [7] as the best available snapshots [1] [2].
Bottom line: authoritative, single-number answers are not present in the current set of sources. The most defensible specific claims from these materials are that five Muslim Americans had been elected to the U.S. Congress by 2025 [1] and that CAIR reported 42 Muslim Americans elected to various public offices in the 2025 cycle across nine states [2].